Ardea Resources flies on $1b debt nod from Australian, US banks for Kalgoorlie nickel build

Uncle Sam and Australia’s export bank are willing to tip nearly $1 billion into a proposed nickel-cobalt project 70km from Kalgoorlie as part of a joint critical minerals resilience drive.

Ardea Resources told investors on Thursday it had received letters of non-binding support and interest from the Export-Import Bank of the United States and Export Finance Australia worth about $US350 million ($500m) and $500m respectively.

The potential funding, conditional on further due diligence and approvals, is for Ardea’s proposed Goongarrie nub nickel-cobalt project in the Goldfields.

Ardea has estimated it would cost at least $3.1 billion to build Goongarrie, which would produce 30,000 tonnes of nickel a year and 2000t of cobalt, according to a 2023 pre-feasibility study.

Support from the North American and Australian banks builds on financing already provided by a Japanese consortium between Sumitomo Metal Mining and Mitsubishi Corporation, which is bankrolling definitive feasibility studies. They are due to be completed within the first half of 2026.

Ardea said it had approached the two new prospective funding partners through the “single point of entry” protocol agreed under the Biden administration and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in 2023 to speed up financing for critical minerals developments.

Active nickel mines remain few and far between in WA — with the exception of Glencore’s Murrin Murrin — since prices took a turn for the worse in 2023 in a collapse that cost thousands of jobs in the State as mines shuttered.

The decline from record high prices in 2022 to struggling to stay above about $US1700/t since then is widely attributed to the large volumes of cheap supply from Indonesia, the word’s dominant producer.

Ardea chief executive Andrew Penkethman — who has previously asserted confidence Goongarrie can go toe-to-toe with Indonesian mines — said the funding represented a “major milestone” for the listed junior.

Its stock was up nearly 10 per cent during morning trade.

“The strong interest from these government backed institutions reinforces the global strategic significance of the Goongarrie hub in meeting both traditional nickel demand in stainless steel and the rapidly increasing requirements of EV and energy storage battery markets,” he said.

Goongarrie in October renewed its major project status awarded by the Federal Government for another three years.

Ardea shares last changed hands at 74¢.

It comes while Australia’s Federal Resources Minister Madeleine King visits the US for a raft of meetings with international counterparts about critical minerals.

Ms King on Wednesday launched a list of 49 mines and 29 midstream projects in Australia to be shopped around for potential investment as allied countries look to shift away from relying so heavily on China.

The Federal Government is ready to pour billions into shoring up more supplies of minerals deemed essential for energy and defence via a $1.2b strategic reserve and a $4 billion funding facility.